Damn, she is annoying. How much do you really have to talk to your boyfriend? My cubicle is right next to her’s so I know every time she makes the call to her boyfriend on the company phone. She literally makes a call every hour to discuss frivolous things such as “I don’t like this,” “I don’t like that”, or “Gossip, Gossip, Gossip, Giggle, Giggle, Giggle”.
I also bet she is e-mailing him and her friends every hour. She got caught sending out way too many personal messages when she first started. She was using the company’s e-mail like instant messaging. I can still hear her typing speedily each day when she sends dainty e-mails. You don’t type that fast or that much when you are working on a document.
I can’t stand her. Even her laugh irritates me now to the point that I want to grab a club and knock her out.
On review, this pitting does not contain enough swear words. Insert as necessary.
Well, Extra Strength, to be fair your new girl might be feeling left out, and like she doesn’t fit in yet. Is there anything you could do to reassure her on that front, maybe? I think maybe she just wants to feel she’s liked, and that the workplace won’t be a barren cold place filled with cool hostility. Maybe she’s had some bad workplaces? Can’t hurt to try to put her more at ease, can it? I don’t know what she’s like otherwise though, so maybe she really is just a pest.
I feel your pain. We have two smokers/cell phoners who take a cigarette break every hour and talk on their cell phone the entire time, so each break is at least 5 minutes, which means that in an 8 hour shift they have exceeded the required by law break times by at least 10 minutes. I have worked graveyard shifts with both of them and they still talk on their phones all night long. Who the hell are they talking to at 4 am? For that matter who the hell are they talking to every hour? If I knew anyone who called me every damned hour I’d block their number.
Meanwhile I am doing the peepee dance because I haven’t had a chance to go to the bathroom as we’ve been so damn busy and as I was heading toward the bathroom they went outside again on their break so I have to be available to cover the phones and have to wait for them to come back in. Not to mention the night shifts when I haven’t had a dinner break yet but they’ve had at least 4 of their hourly cigarette/phone breaks.
When I work with smokers who take an inordinate amount of breaks, I just start going out with them every time they go. Good enough for them, good enough for me. If management wants to call me on it, I am fully prepared to ruin it for everyone. That shit don’t fly with me.
Can you bust your co-worker, Chasing Dreams? She is a time-thief at your company, and most companies don’t care for that.
Well, I can’t go out with them on break for a few reasons; 1) someone has to answer the phones and be available if clients come in and on some shifts there’s only two people on duty at a time, 2) There’s an established rule that only one person is allowed on an outside smoke break at a time, 3) I would have a bad asthma attack since cigarette smoke is one of my triggers - I can’t even be around one of these women right after she comes in from a break, for some reason she reeks of smoke and the other girl never does.
They also usually combine their smoke breaks with pseudo-work, like taking stuff out to the dumpster, walking an employee to their car (on the late shifts) or walking a dog so in their mind they are “working”.
What kind of work do you do? I once worked in a support organization where four of us had the job of working and closing computer related cases. I got a bad review - enough that my manager put me on a performance plan. So I started pulling metrics each week of cases closed and posting them outside my cube. And I started sending out satisfaction surveys and posting those results. And I was closing 30% more cases than anyone else with similar satisfaction numbers - and that performance plan thing completely disappeared, and I got a “surprise” raise - seems the person who had closed the lowest number of cases with the worst satisfaction of the four of us got the best review. Within six weeks of me posting numbers, everyone’s numbers improved. I also left about six months later - couldn’t stand working for someone who couldn’t stand me (the place was run like a high school cheerleading squad - “popular” people did well).
If you are all doing similar hourly jobs - have your manager put in a system of metrics. If she is getting her work done with her phone calls and emails, then they are simply annoying. If she isn’t, metrics will scare her into changing her behavior, won’t reward her for her behavior
I can’t understand either party in that relationship. What the hell does her boyfriend do that he can take all those calls? We had a situation at work where a manager answered the phone and told the caller that employee X was with a customer and unavailable.
“Well this is his girlfriend and I don’t care who he’s with I want to talk to him right now”
{where the hell did she grow up?}
The manager said, “Oh really, this is his boss and if he wants to have a job tomorrow I suggest you stop calling him at work”
My coworkers wife used to call several times a day and get irritated with me because we’d get busy and I’d forget to tell him she called. He relayed her complaints to me and I made an honest effort but when she continued to bitch I finally said, “That’s it. Get a pager or something because I’m not your dam answering service. I’m trying to make a living and I’m not searching the store for you or stopping my work to look for something to write a message on several times a day. End of discussion”
I don’t understand the person taking all these calls, either. My husband is at work - I’ll call him (on his cellphone - no receptionist needs to take time from work for us) once or twice a week (“I’m going to be late shopping - don’t wait for me to eat” kinda conversations), and that’s plenty. I don’t need to hear his manly voice every hour, on the hour.
We once hired a woman part time who was constantly on the phone with her husband. I mean like they were conjoined. A lot of the time all they were doing was breathing at each other. I am not making this up. Finally the department head fired her ass when he couldn’t get through to her from outside the building.
How old is this person? I encountered similar behavior in a young guy who, I hope, had just been hired for his very first full time job. He ended up being fired well short of his one-year probationary period.
Why on God’s green earth would you skip your dinner break so they can smoke? Why on God’s still-green earth would you stop on your way to the restroom and turn around because you see them leaving to smoke? Eating and urinating are vital functions. Smoking and slagging off outside are not.
Next time it’s your dinner break, go, whether they’re there or not. If you get questioned about it, your answer is “I was taking my scheduled dinner break. Smoking slag #1 and smoking slag #2 were scheduled to cover the phones.” Next time you see them leaving to smoke when you have to piss, call out in a loud voice “Excuse me, but I need to use the restroom so I need one of you to cover the phone” and keep walking. Fuck the inconsiderate bitches in their smoke-filled necks.
About 10 years ago, I had a coworker who did the giggling on the phone thing. She had a new boyfriend, several states away, and she would call him from work once or twice a day. Long calls. Calls made in a baby-voice on her end. A high, squeaky, giggly baby-voice, loud enough to be heard all around the office. Yep, that’s the way to make a good impression.
I don’t delay my dinner or pee breaks for their smoke breaks, it just works out that way. I have other duties and abilities that they don’t so I may be involved in doing lab work and not get a break but everything else slowed down allowing them to take a smoke break. They will always take smoke breaks for themselves before their bathroom or dinner breaks. Usually, I don’t even get a chance to say, “no, you can’t take a break now because I have to pee” because they say they’re taking a break as they are walking out the door.
The annoying girl and I work at an engineering company in the oil and gas industry. Her boyfriend works at an oil and gas company that owns the wells/pipelines/facilities. Also in engineering. We are all university students on internship. I think she is 22 years old.
It beats me how her boyfriend has so much time to chat, but I heard that some of those large oil and gas companies are pretty liberal. I can’t understand how she has so much time to chat. At our company, if you have free time, you go find work from someone else. The work doesn’t come to you. Lately, there has been a lull in the amount of work at the company so she has had a particularly large amount of time on her hands. :dubious:
All the work we do is basically on the computer, filling out forms, or drawing stuff. We have different duties because she is suppose to be in a different department so I can’t say how much work is a lot of work for a person with her job. But, I haven’t ever seen her work overtime whereas I have on many occasions.
From all her phone calls and what I have overheard, I would describe her as ditsy. Popular topics for discussion are sushi, her sister, her sister’s wedding, where to go for the next vacation, who’s dating who, and who doesn’t like who.
My internship ends in 6 months, 5 months if I ask to take an early leave. I don’t know if I’ll do anything. She DOES sit in the cubicle right beside mine!
Ugh, that reminds me of my first job out of school. I was working as a office manager/receptionist. There was a guy there, we’ll call him Pete. Pete was a pretty cool guy, friendly, we got along fine.
There was only one problem.
His wife. Let’s call her Myrtle. She would call several times a day, asking to talk to Pete. This was before cell phones. I was incredibly busy, and having to deal with her was really annoying. Especially if Pete was unavailable. Then she got worked up, which was even more annoying.
My co-workers and I never could figure out what Pete saw in Myrtle. And we figured out that Myrtle might have had the same problem, resulting in her enormous insecurity and constant need for contact with Pete throughout the day.
I did eventually talk to Pete about it, and the frequency of calls did drop.
Another reason i am so glad that I don’t work at that place anymore.
We have a couple of those where I work. What makes it funny is, all our phone lines are recorded. A couple of years back we had issues where one drama queen was complaining about another drama queen to third parties over the phone, and then when DQ 1 left the room DQ 2 would play back the tape to hear what was said, and then more drama ensued.
My husband calls me at work sometimes to chat in the middle of the night, but it’s always about mundane stuff like what do you want for breakfast tomorrow, and does the mini-Marli need lunch money, stuff like that. He knows that if I interrupt him with “I gotta go” he needs to hang up immediately. I once took a call from a co-worker’s boyfriend who got very upset when I told him, “She’s taking a 911 call, I’ll tell her you called.” He said, “But this is important!”
To co-worker’s credit, she did call him back and chew him a new asshole when I told her what he said.
When the back log gets too much, I will have a young woman come in for half a day to help with the filing and copying. One such lovely stayed on her cell phone the entire four hours. When I told her to do anything it was “Okay, wait a minute.” But otherwise, non-stop chatter.